This is Not the End (Part 1 – The End) Shortlisted at NiTH!

The challenge was (is) to write a four part story in reverse order. Of course, each part of the story needs to be a story in its own right, and the reverse story needs to be engaging and coherent. In other words, it needs to follow a proper story arc. It’s no good having a big climax in part one (the end) if things progressively fizzles out as the story progresses (regresses) to part four (the start).

When I first saw the brief I thought it looked fun, a ‘bit’ challenging, and achievable. Then I started work and I realised how difficult this really was! Starting at the end means you lose any element of surprise – or that surprise has to be in the foreshadowing of the stuff your reader will already know. It also means that you really need to know how things start, as you don’t want to run out of things to say by the time you get to the end (start).

This brain hurting challenge was masterminded by the awesome Tobias Madden, and you can reach his blog here.